D-Link Germany GmbH, a subsidiary of D-Link Corporation, Taiwan R.O.C., distributed DSM-G600, a network attached storage device which uses a Linux-based Operating System. However, this distribution was incompliant with the GNU General Public License (GPL) which covers the Linux Kernel and many other software programs used in the product.

You do really think would have written that if I tried to apply for a nice round of "brick my iLiad and loose it 3 weeks to get it reflashed"?

Nah, I figure you have your Sony on order and are waiting for iRex to fall flat on their faces so we can all get our money back on our iLiad's.

Actually for my purposes the iLiad is superior to the Sony: bigger screen, Wacom for note taking. And I still think it's the better platform for the legally blind, assuming they ever produce consumer grade software for it...

I ordered the Sony for my wife to use to read her college text books on. She likes that it is smaller, lighter and can fit in a "cargo pocket". She's also less intimidated carrying around a $350 device we can get replaced overnight and is backed by a company that understands "customer service".

I can OCR and re-flow her text books into non-DRM BBeB files for her. I'm highly skeptical of the 7500 page turns per charge figure (the Librie never got 10,000 turns per set of batteries) but I'm guessing it can get more operating hours per charge than my iLiad can right now.

Seems iRex now has someone to mess with. If the power-management in the PRS500 works as described by some of the "big ones" here at mobileread, iRex has definitely something to learn. Although the hardware is not that easy to compare. iRex already mentioned somewhere that the Wacom screen is a little bugger for power-management. (power-management with Linux is hard, even if you are only a user, you only need the wrong hardware and you are lost, although they made great progress in the last years.)
But that should not hinder them from publishing the sources.
I wouldn't have thought Sony would have the guts to publish the sources, but it looks like they learned from their past.

BTW: If I would order a Sony Reader, I think I already know what to do with the iLiad. And it will not be getting back the money, but donating it, to "you know what".org

You've got the nub of it, scotty1024. They're not, strickly speaking, directly competing products, more like different niches of the same general product concept. like toaster-ovens and microwaves, rather than GE's microwave and LG's microwave.

They have overlap, but they're aimed at different applications, a lot of which a person chooses is going to come down to what they plan/need to do with such a device.

I, for example, just want to read. I could do that on the iLiad just fine, but I could also do it just fine on the Sony, and at ~1/2 the cost, I don't mind missing the things that would be almost completely bragware for me (wacom, wi-fi, etc.). Someone else would have a completely different take on those features, and arrive at the other choice just as legitimately.

BTW: If I would order a Sony Reader, I think I already know what to do with the iLiad. And it will not be getting back the money, but donating it, to "you know what".org

*grin* ... but don't give up yet. iRex will - sooner or later - release the sources, and then us mere mortals can play around with the software again. I think the iLiad has a lot of potential thanks to its hardware design.

The one thing I'm curious about is if there will be a hint what the mysterious "unused" connector pins are good for. And when they will support/open access to the bootloader so you get a way to reflash the iLiad even if the software got messed up.